Part I - Beautiful Losers |
Farming -- and not you-know-what -- is the oldest profession, the first human activity that distinguished our method of obtaining food from the methods of our animal relatives. In the ten thousand years hence, civilization has been built upon the foundation of systematic food production. Technology and commerce have greatly refined the ways in which we produce and distribute food, yet the age-old rhythms of farming remain very much the same. That aspect of farming which remains the most constant is the primeval struggle of man against nature, and with it the resourcefulness, social isolation and fatalism that characterize the farmer's attitudes toward surviving natural adversities. In the case of cranberries, these are the ancient and eternal woes of frost, flood and plague. Whatever the technology at his/her disposal, most cranberry growers, on frost nights, seeing a bog in bloom submerged by downpours or a crop devoured by insects, experience the raw, primitive emotion of defeat of imminent ruin. Whatever one's religious convictions, the farmer frequently faces "no-atheists-in-foxholes" kinds of challenges, often followed by an inner plaint: "Why me, Lord?" Yet, even after a devastating loss, the farmer usually takes great pride in being able to survive any setback. Such ordeals winnow weak spirits from the profession, but unfortunately, also produce a predisposition especially vulnerable to exploitation -- a personality type I call the "beautiful loser." Because the obvious crises farmers face are of natural origin, it creates a mindset that all the crises farmers face are "acts of God." Even when the causes of failure are distinctly human, such as draconian, counterproductive regulation (the trap ban), or over promising by brokers or marketing organizations (the current crop price disaster), the farmer tends to tighten hiss belt, and his upper lip, and tries to endure. Even though farming has been in relative decline as a "lifestyle" for 150 years, and the reasons have been mainly technological and economic (i.e. human-induced), farmers tend to accept the changes stoically, ass if they were divinely ordained. Even when skilled with hydraulic equipment, chemical technology, tax codes and amortization, farmers tend to think of themselves as throwbacks -- sturdy yeomen in a frothy, frivolous age. If the farm isn't doing well, then it's the weather, the bugs, or another impersonal force that is to blame. It our "way of life" is waning, well, then, we're still noble characters from a halcyon past, brawny individualists defying the regimented timidity of our cosseted contemporaries. Even if our profits are being sapped by shrewd traders; even if regulations are imposed by zealots who don't understand; even if we're losing -- at least we're beautiful losers. Beautiful Losers as the title of a book written by Leonard Cohen about thirty years ago, containing meditations about the demise of the way of life of Native Americans overwhelmed by European settlement in North America, The spectacular freedom of pastoral nomads had no room to survive in a property-owning culture laced by railroads, delineated by barbed wire and backed by firearms; neither did their spiritual relationship with nature withstand industrialism, alcohol, and population growth. Even though agriculture represent the origin of "property-owning culture;" even thought its achievements undergird all other achievements of civilized life, the farmer himself, in some respects, lives in greater social and political isolation than ever. Until this century, farmers tended to live in communities of other farmers; as recently as the 1920's, one quarter of all Americans still lived on farms. In the last three generations, because of increased productivity, increased capital requirements and decreased manpower needs, farmers live scattered far apart on vast landscapes. Neighbors are interspersed in suburban tracts; they are likely to be as unfamiliar with the rhythms and challenges of farming as distant city dwellers. Farmers labor to produce a crop with nightly frost, flood and pests ass adversaries, but also neighbors who hate the sounds of machinery and regulators who fear agricultural technology. Farmers live in a world where the global flow of money and the merchandising power of advertising can change the equation of profit and loss with the speed of changing images on a television screen. Farmers unfamiliar with the torrent of available data in the information age might as well be trusting their fate to the angry gods of a distant universe. It's absolutely essential that farmers have basic understanding of wealth creation and the functioning of markets in the post-industrial society, or we will be taken advantage of by people who do. It is a cliche that a dollar's worth of bread contains only a few cents worth of wheat. Cranberry growers are now seeing their incomes shrink drastically, even as the world eats more cranberries. Can we profit from this increasingly popular fruit, and increase our wealth accordingly? Or are we destined to see somebody else away with the money, see our net worth shrink and many farms go out of business? Will we find another way to prosper, or add to the ranks of Beautiful Losers? Next installment -- "Whither capital? Whither labor?"
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